Hello! Sorry maybe for this beginners-question: do I need dedicated anti-virus / anti-malware software for my Linux System?

I’m not using my laptop for anything shady: no filesharing, no pirating, etc. Just the usual boring bit of work or streaming or surfing the web. Do I need dedicated safety measures? Like ClamAV for example? I read a bit about it but there where mixed messages, where people said it’s not needed.

I’m running Linux Mint and Cinnamon on a laptop since a few months and couldn’t be happier with an operating system. Everything works fine and until now I had no trouble at all (besides this little annoying bug, where my touchpad gets randomly set to “deactivated”, but this really is a minor issue and maybe just a “stupid user”-Problem).

Before I suffered through decades of windows. But no more!

  • rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    If you have common sense, you do not need a dedicated program.

    If you want to be extra sure, then of course you can download ClamAV and/or rkhunter. Still, the average user does not need them.